The overcrowding of prisons and the high cost of their construction and operation have made urgent the need for effective and economical alternatives to institutional incarceration. Remote confinement systems which are sometimes referred to as "home arrest" or "home incarceration" systems have attracted a great deal of public interest in recent years as an aid for probation and as an alternative to prison or other institutional confinement for selected criminal offenders. A number of such systems are disclosed in the co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 07/041,698 entitled "Remote Confinement System", filed on Apr. 28, 1987 which is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. That application discloses systems for remotely monitoring the presence of an individual within a designated confinement area as well as for remotely determining the compliance of such a confined person with behavioral restrictions such as abstinence from use of substances such as alcohol and also for remotely verifying the identity of the individual.
In one typical type of remote confinement system, a central monitoring station is equipped with means for communicating with various remote confinement areas for the purpose of verifying the presence and optionally, the sobriety of confinees assigned to those areas. Such means may include provision for selectively establishing communications links with each remote confinement location according to a set or partially randomized schedule. For example, provision may be made for a host computer located at the central monitoring station and having access to schedule information to select from a data base the phone number of a specified confinee and to automatically dial that phone number via a modem connected to a conventional telephone network to initiate communication with the remote confinement area to which that confinee is assigned.
Upon answering the telephone, the confinee is audibly prompted to identify himself or herself using apparatus provided at the remote confinement area and optionally, to take a breath alcohol test, the results of which as well as identity information are transmitted to the central monitoring station. Upon receipt of this information at the central monitoring station such identity and/or sobriety information may either be stored for subsequent evaluation or subjected to immediate manual or automatic analysis to determine whether the designated confinee is present and complying with any applicable behavioral restrictions. Patent application Ser. No. 07/041,698 teaches various identity confirming techniques and behavioral condition testing devices which may be incorporated with advantage into such remote confinement systems.
It is also known in the prior art to monitor or supervise the behavior of individuals from a central station using a radio transmitter secured to or implanted within the body of such individuals. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,478,344 to Schwitzgebel discloses a behavioral supervision system wherein individuals to be monitored are equipped with a wrist-mounted oscillator and bodily carried transceiver unit. The oscillator causes the transmitter to generate a recognizably modulated radio signal in response to an interrogation signal generated by a second transceiver at the central station which includes means for determining the direction of the signal identifying the supervised person. The identifying oscillator is secured to the wrist of the supervised person by means of a band including an electrical connection which disconnects the oscillator if the band is attempted to be removed from the person of the confinee by cutting or breaking. Such tampering also throws a magnetic latching relay located inside the transceiver carried by the confinee which initiates transmission of a high-power, prioritized signal to the central station. Once the latching relay is set, it may be reset only by use of a specialized reset device which applies a strong magnetic pulse to the relay in order to reset it.
The need for such specialized reset devices causes great inconvenience and hampers economical operation of the remote confinement system. First, the reset devices themselves must be built or purchased and properly maintained thereby adding to the cost of the system. Also, when a tamper signal is received, the parole officer or other authorized personnel dispatched to the remote confinement area to check the integrity of the equipment worn by the confinee and reset the tamper signal must carry the special reset device with them. Unless all personnel who perform such work are provided with special reset devices and maintain them in proper working order, the parole officer closest to the confinee may not be able to reset the device. The officer would then have to travel to locate an operational reset device and return to carry out the reset function. This would not only impose additional manpower and travel expense but would also lengthen the time required to restore the system to full security operation.